Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1879 — The Complaint in a Curious Divorce Suit Dismissed. [ARTICLE]

The Complaint in a Curious Divorce Suit Dismissed.

A divorce, suit with some peculiar features was tried yesterday before Judge Donohue in the Supreme Court, Special Term. The plaintiff was Richard I. Aspinwall, a fashionably dressed man about thirty-three years old. The defendant, Helen C. Aspinwall, as she was called in the complaint, was a plump, pleasant-featured woihan, several years younger than the plaintiff. There was no dispute about the main facts of the case. In the spring of 1874 the plaintiff was boarding at the residence of the mother of Helen C. Smith, the defendant. One day the

party at the dinner-table grew merry' over the champagne, and Mr. Aspinwall proposed that Miss Smith and her sister should accompany him on a frolic. As they were passing a church on Ninth avenue and Eighty-third street, Mr. Aspinwall, seeing the clergyman, Mr. Oertel, at the door, stepped in and told him he wanted to be married. “But where is the bride?” asked the minister. “She’s outside,” was the answer; “I’ll go and get her.” He returned with the defendant and they were married. After this hasty ceremony the two continued to live in the same house, Mr. Aspinwall accompanying Mrs. Smith in several changes of Boarding places. Mr. Aspinwall had, however, cautioned the young ladies that the fact of the marriage should not be divulged, and the young bride continued to be known as Miss Helen Smith.

At Flushing, in the summer of 1875. Joseph L Frame became acquainted with the Smith family, grew attached to Miss Helen, proposed marriage to her and was accepted. They were married in the following spring. Mr. Aspinwall based the charges of adultery made in the divorce suit just begun against his alleged wife on the fact of this second marriage. The defendant’s answer was that the first marriage was illegal and void, having been procured by fraud on the part of the plaintiff, the defendant being ignorant that she was entering into a marriage contract.

The minister who performed the ceremony aud Mr. Aspinwall testified to the circumstances. The latter said that he might have been flushed with wine, but was not drunk. Mr. Frame, who was called as witness for the plaintiff, testified to his marriage to the defendant, and that he had since lived with her as her husband. On crossexamination he gave a conversatio that occurred between himself and Mr. Aspinwall in Flushing, soon after his proposal io the defendant. Mr. Aspinwall followed him to the door and said: “Nellie tells me you want to marry her. Is that so?” “Yes,” was the answer. “I suppose,” said the plaintiff, “you have heard of that little thing that happened between us?” Mr. Frame said that he had heard of it. “Well,” said Mr. Aspinwall, “there’s nothing in it—Nellie is as pure as a flower.” When the plaintiff’s case was rested, a motion was made to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that the previous marriage was not valid, and that if there had been adultery in the second marriage the plaintiff was barred from pleading it because it was with his connivance. The motion to dismiss was granted.—[New York Tribune.